Smashing Atom: Ariel Atom V8 vs. Large Hadron Collider

The upshift time for the Atom’s Sadev ST-90 six-speed sequential racing gearbox is about 40 milliseconds—a tenth of an eye blink. In those 40 milliseconds, the atoms zipping beneath us around the underground loop of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) would have traveled nearly 7500 miles, more than twice the distance from Seattle to Miami. By the time I’d reached 60 mph in about three seconds without trying, the LHC atoms were 560,000 miles away—nearly 325,000 miles beyond the moon. Game over, little car. Even when you have 475 horsepower and a feather-light (claimed) 1213-pound curb weight, 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light is not a velocity to be trifled with. Even more humiliating for the Atom V-8, the LHC may have just observed a speed even faster than that of light.

We’ve come to Switzerland to compare the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator with one of the world’s fastest-accelerating cars. The fact that it’s called an “Atom” made such an outing a no-brainer. Our mission today is to trace the particle accelerator’s loop as closely as we can in the Atom and set a representative time. But dive deeper into CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, the biggest and most complex machine on Earth, and even a car this staggeringly quick becomes somewhat of a triviality. Why “Hadron”? Because “hadron” is the name of the protons the LHC accelerates. Why “Large”? Because the underground loop of the LHC, located at an average 300 feet beneath the semi-suburban sprawl of western Geneva, measures 16.6 miles. Why “Collider”? Because the LHC spins particle beams around the loop in opposite directions, then slams them into each other at four intersection points, a bit like crossovers on a slot-car track, where four detectors—one of which, ATLAS, weighs 7700 tons—analyze the results. Why? To find dark matter and antimatter and the “Higgs boson” [see "Big Bang Baby" above]; learn more about what was going on during the big bang; and uncover the deepest secrets of the universe, generally. Sort of makes internal combustion seem quaint.

The LHC’s particles travel in a stream, in bunches about three inches long, within two-inch-diameter tubes. The pressure in the tubes is 10 times lower than that on the moon. A series of 9600 adjustable magnets is used to accelerate and bend the particles around the track and squeeze them in preparation for collision—the denser the particle streams are, the more likely they are to collide. Even so, the particles are so small that the task of making them hit each other is akin to firing needles from two positions six miles apart with such precision that they meet halfway.

TOM SALT, GETTY IMAGES

Scientist Stefano Redaelli is our guide to the machine. A likeable and affable Italian with a normal-size forehead, Redaelli is an engineer-physicist with 12 years’ experience at CERN and more degrees than the sun. We’re chatting in the main LHC control room, a vast NASA-style nerve center of screens, knobs, and switches. His job is to drive this baby and get the best energy density from the beam.

The speeds involved mean nothing to him but a lot to me. Beam particles travel around the 16.6-mile loop 11,245 times a second. I find it difficult to visualize more than about seven objects at once—trying to visualize 11,245 laps of a near-17-mile loop every second is tricky. In car terms, it’s 674,700 rpm.

Where do the particles start? I ask. Is there a pit garage for them? A tiny particle paddock or particle parc fermé? No, Redaelli grins, they’re extracted from hydrogen. Then they’re put into a series of smaller booster loops before being injected into the big LHC loop, where they are kicked up to full speed by the magnets.

“Even though it is very small—15 microns, or about one-sixth the diameter of a human hair—the LHC beam has the equivalent energy of 175 pounds of TNT,” says Redaelli. “It has enough energy to melt 1100 pounds of copper.”

Left to right: The boys peer in and want a ride, the girl wants to race; World's largest solenoid magnet; the Atom V-8 takes a spin around the CERN globe.

TOM SALT, GETTY IMAGES

An LHC injection was going on as we spoke. I asked whether there was a button that I really shouldn’t push, preferably a red one, and Redaelli instantly pointed to a red switch labeled “Beam Dump” and told me not to touch it. This machine runs at a cost of about $4000 per hour for electricity alone, and the injection had been going on for several hours. If I threw the Beam Dump switch, magnets would stop the beam and all of that effort would be lost. The temptation of that switch was intense. Redaelli told me that on no account should I flip it. It was calling me. Never in my life have I wanted more to flip a switch.

While I was not flipping the switch, outside in the parking lot lurked our little Ariel Atom V-8, the latest and by far the wildest version of the open-wheel two-seat British sports car, with a new injection of its own—a V-8 made in the U.S. by race-car-engine specialist John Hartley. I managed to shut Redaelli up about his LHC eventually, then levered him into the passenger seat and tightened his five-point harness. We took to the roads above the loop.

The Atom is noisy even at low speed, its V-8 buzzing angrily behind your head. There is no windshield or body, just a couple of plexiglass bug-killers and some scaffolding for a chassis.

TOM SALT, GETTY IMAGESCar and Driver

I unleashed Hell at the first opportunity, and Redaelli shouted. Good. Even a super-genius dealing with light speed and muons and neutrino transformations will yell when his own body is accelerated in such a shocking fashion—this near-weightless thing spins its 245-section rear tires violently in the first three gears in the dry and hits 100 mph in less than six seconds.

After bubbling about the experience, Redaelli asked two neat physicist’s questions: 1) Do you have experience driving this type of car? and 2) Does it run on ordinary fuel? I answered both in the affirmative, and he was relieved and impressed in equal measure.

Half an hour more and a few full-throttle blasts were enough: Redaelli had an appointment with the LHC. We dropped him off and said goodbye. Time to don a helmet and investigate some Atomic acceleration of our own. It’s time for a lap. Meet one of the most wicked road cars in the world, a sub-3.0-second machine without the benefit of launch control or all-wheel drive. This baby is all power and lightness, each unit of horsepower pushing much less than three pounds of Ariel. All 25 Atom V-8s have been sold, at a list price of £150,000 in the U.K., the equivalent of about $250,000 by the time the five allocated for our market hit the ground here.

The V-8 slots in where our so-called normal Atom 3s have a supercharged version of the Honda Civic Type R’s 2.0-liter inline four. Inspired by the Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle’s engine, this 75-degree aluminum V-8 has a flat-plane crank and unequal firing intervals. It’s dry-sumped and revs to 10,600 rpm: Peak power of 475 horses arrives at 10,500 rpm. It’s a sensational engine, pulling this featherweight chassis easily and without fuss from low revs, then kicking hard past 5000 rpm, with another VTEC-like surge at 7000 rpm, 750 rpm before peak torque arrives. Yeah, it’s peaky.

The real action happens in that last 3500 rpm, which, as you can imagine, flies by pretty quickly. I have never driven any road car—Bugatti Veyron included—that feels as fast as this little monster. In the Bugatti, you’re sitting in what amounts to a superquick Bentley. In the Atom, you’re exposed to the world, and it hits you straight in the face. It’s relentless, extraordinary, shocking.

Quite easy to drive, too, mainly thanks to that Sadev six-speed, which puts the Hartley’s energy to the road via a limited-slip differential. It’s a brilliant gearbox, working with expensive-sounding pneumatic hisses as it rams each gear home.

Brief stretches of open road between villages allow me to attack harder, and I learn that the ’box only reveals its true ability when you’re pushing it, matching revs precisely on downshifts under heavy braking. It’s one of the most expensive and impressive components on the car.

Left: The Atom V-8 looks like one of those European kid’s toys that only varsity geeks would attempt to build, which, in a way, it is. Right: The author gives the scientist a thrill ride.

TOM SALT, GETTY IMAGESCar and Driver

Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay the Atom V-8 is that its chassis doesn’t feel overwhelmed by the power. It handles it. The unassisted steering is the equal of a Lotus Elise’s in feel, all lively play and dancing in your hands, a living thing full of energy and feedback. Of course the rear will break traction if you provoke it, but the real pleasure is in measuring the application of that power and not burning rubber, using every bit of thrust on hand to maximize your pace.

I’m soon using full throttle on the open road, but briefly, because my worst fear is arriving at a corner too fast and running out of room—all too easy because the car’s 11.4-inch brake discs are not backed up with ABS.

Time after time, I accelerate out of tight corners and never get used to the shock of it. But the Atom is not a one-trick pony—it’s a very high-end piece of engineering, control-arm and adjustable-damper suspensions doing wonderful work in nailing it all to the road.

After completing the 20-mile road loop in 44 minutes 28 seconds—in which time the LHC atoms have traveled more than 500 million miles, or more than halfway to Saturn—I head south for the D41a running over the hills from Collonges to Cruseilles, a road I know to be fast and uninterrupted. It is dispatched in a single manic blast, the Atom forgiving and docile if you treat it with respect, rolling along easily on its torque when you’re worn out by the speed. When I stop for breath at the Plan du Salève viewpoint and gaze east toward the Chaine des Aravis and Mont Blanc, it occurs to me that I haven’t given the Large Hadron Collider or its magnets or beam or loop a millisecond’s thought in more than two hours.

If ever there was a car to make you forget about everything else in the known universe, this is the one.